Black Desert
Pearl Abyss · ARPG, RPG, Action
Overview
Played by over 20 million Adventurers - Black Desert Online is an open-world, action MMORPG. Experience intense, action-packed combat, battle massive world bosses, fight alongside friends to siege and conquer castles, and train in professions such as fishing, trading, crafting, cooking, and more!
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Go Beyond Limits : WORLD CLASS MMORPG
Black Desert is a game that tests the limitations of MMORPG
By implementing remastered graphics and audio. Enjoy exciting combat and siege,
Exploration, trading, fishing, training, alchemy, cooking, gathering, hunting, and more in the vast open world.
OPEN WORLD
An expansive, breathtaking open world MMORPG made with Pearl Abyss' proprietary game engine.
Become Your True Self
Experience insane levels of customization.
From height, torso, face, and skin texture, to micro-level details, your imagination is the limit!
Create your own unique characters, just like you've always desired, in Black Desert.
Non-Target & Fast-Paced Combat
Experience an innovative combat system unlike any other MMORPG.
The need for quick reactions and precise control will keep you enthralled throughout your entire experience.
Exciting commands/combos will always keep you on your toes.
Large-Scale PvP Wars
Guilds, prepare for battle! Victory is near!
Join formidable guilds as they fight head-to-head on the battlefield.
Be victorious, become lords, and seize control of taxes, resources, and more!
Remastered Cutting-Edge Graphics
Enter a world with spectacular sceneries, realistic environments, and sophisticated details created with state-of-the-art graphics and prepare for unforgettable adventures.
Multitudes of In-Game Activities
Combat not your style?
Relax and enjoy a variety of pleasant life skill activities!
With a variety of choices including farming, trading, fishing, sailing, cooking, horse training, alchemy, and more, the professions are endless. Try your hand at any or all of them!
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,996 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Combat comes up as often as anything in these reviews, tied with the grind, and a recurring line, even in some negative reviews, is that it is the best combat in any MMO. Reviewers also praise how the world looks, a character creator some call the best they have used, and a sandbox of life skills: fishing, horse breeding, sailing, trading, cooking and workers spread across the map. The low price with no subscription, the giveaways and the free catch-up gear that carries new characters to the midgame make it easy to try.
Past the seasonal catch-up, players describe a long grind built on gear enhancement that can downgrade or destroy items, and some say the cash shop sells convenience they feel they cannot do without. New players describe the first hours as a cluttered interface, a stream of popups and walls of dialogue skipped with the R key. Reviewers say the Steam version put them on Turkish, Russian, Portuguese or Spanish servers based on their region, and veterans with thousands of hours mourn PvP changes, freebies that devalue their work and accounts deleted after a break. 61.6% recommend the game, and some of the positive reviews still warn about the time and money it asks for.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Fast, combo-driven action combatHigh
Praise for the combat turns up in negative reviews as well as positive ones, and 13% of reviews mention it. Players describe fast, combo-driven classes that play like a fighting game, two weapon styles per class (reviewers call them succession and awakening) and a skill ceiling that stays high after thousands of hours. Some scathing reviews concede it: "This game has the best combat of any MMO period, but also one of the worst progression system in a B2P game ever."
The complaints are narrower. One new player found the rotation shrinks over time: "The combat is awesome until you realize it turns into a same 3-4 moves over and over for hundreds/thousands of hours." Some newcomers say questing mobs die in one hit, so combos hardly matter early on, and a smaller group finds the key combinations awkward: "For me the control setup for combat is awkward and clunky." PvP players add desync and class balance complaints, covered under PvP below.
A world that still looks goodHigh
About 10% of reviews praise the graphics, scenery, lighting and animation, and some add that it holds up against newer MMOs: "The environment and the characters look great, considering how long this game has been out for." Players single out the ocean, the remastered mode and a map with no loading screens between regions. Looking that good takes hardware (see performance below), and several reviewers say it looks dated or blurry on lower settings, with pop-in and shimmering.
A sandbox of life skillsHigh
Life skills come up in 9% of reviews. Players describe fishing, cooking, alchemy, horse taming and breeding, sailing and ship building, trading, farming, housing and workers spread across the map, much of it playable at a relaxed pace. One solo life-skiller called it "a retirement home for MMO players tired of the current MMO market offerings". The complaints here are about economics: reviewers say crafted goods often sell for less than raw materials, and that the most efficient routes mean leaving the PC running (see AFK play below).
A character creator some call the best they have usedMedium
About 5% of reviews mention character creation, and some go as far as this one: "Character Creator is insane, the best in any MMO I have played maybe the best period." Players joke about spending hours in it before playing. Two caveats come up: classes are locked to one gender, and the best-looking outfits cost real money, so a character in default armor can look plain.
A low price, no subscription and frequent giveawaysLow
About 2% of reviews bring up value, often noting the game sold for around a dollar on sale or was given away. "For $10 it's a steal(No Subscription Fee)." Some compare that with subscription MMOs. Others reply that the up-front price hides the cost of the cash shop (see the split on monetization below).
Steady updates and quality-of-life fixesLow
About 2% of reviews credit weekly updates, events and quality-of-life changes they list as family-wide life skill levels, faster server swaps, fast travel through the Magnus questline and a pity system for enhancing. Several returning players write that the game is far friendlier than when they left. Veterans counter that new gear and grind spots arrive faster than new things to do with them.
Where players are split
Pay to win or pay for convenienceHigh
Monetization comes up in 8% of reviews, and the argument runs both ways. Defenders say nothing in the shop is required, costumes can be sold for in-game silver, and the advantage per dollar is small: "BDO is not as aggressively pay-to-win as some people make it sound, but it absolutely has pay-for-convenience elements." Critics list loot pets, the repair tent, weight and inventory expansions, the value pack (without it, they say, the marketplace takes a larger cut and outfit dyes disappear when it lapses), maids, fairy skill rerolls, crystal restores and cron stones melted from costumes. One of them put it as "This game is not a choice between pay or grind. It is very much pay TO grind". Another grievance is that some purchases are bound to one character in a game built around playing several classes, and one reviewer quit over dance emotes sold per character.
Open-world PvP: gutted for veterans, still harsh for newcomersMedium
PvP comes up in 7% of reviews, mostly from players with a thousand hours or more. Veterans describe a run of changes that removed open-world fights and one-sided guild wars, punished player killing, reworked node wars and capped gear in the most played PvP, leaving them nothing to gear for: "No reason to progress gear wise because the popular content is gear capped anyway." Desync, class balance swings and class nerfs add to the anger. Players who never wanted PvP see it differently. Some welcome the changes ("a fully geared player would show up and crack your skull open just because they felt like it" was how one described the old days), while other newcomers report being flagged for PvP after level 50 and pushed off grind spots by gankers.
PerformanceMedium
About 4% of reviews talk about performance, and they disagree. Some say the game runs well on modest laptops or the Steam Deck; others report stutter, heavy pop-in, poor anti-aliasing, overheating laptops and frame drops in crowded fights. One player says frame rate affects damage on some classes: "half of my favorite classes require you to be playing at 120+ fps to do optimal damage".
Free catch-up gear and seasonal serversMedium
About 4% of reviews talk about the seasonal servers, free boss gear, free horses and other catch-up rewards, and they pull in opposite directions. New and returning players like being carried to a competitive character in days: "The game became quite easy, if not really easy-mode when starting out." A player who loved the old grind finds the shortcut empties progression of meaning: "They try to close that gap by giving you a lot for free but in my opinion that just makes the game boring." Other veterans feel their years of work were handed out, warning that "they'll be giving it to new players for free every few months". Several players also describe a cliff right after graduating from the season, when free gear stops and real progression costs hundreds of hours.
AFK progressMedium
About 3% of reviews mention AFK play. Busy players like progressing while they work or sleep: "My character got to level 56 just by auto fishing while I was at work!!" Critics say the best routes require the PC to run around the clock, that much of the playtime people log is idle, and that it makes the world feel empty. One of them, sarcastically: "Recommended for playing at work where you can be away from it for 4 hours or more at a time."
A single-player MMOMedium
About 3% of reviews describe Black Desert as a solo game with other people in it. Some like exactly that: "One of the better singleplayer MMORPGs. Yes, I said singleplayer." Players who came with friends are disappointed: "its like your doing all the quests parallel and not as a group, even when you party up." Others say there is almost no group PvE, few dungeons and no direct trading between players: "I could not trade a carrot with a Friend while we were playing together." Several reviewers say the game only feels social inside an active guild.
Community: helpful guilds or toxic chatLow
About 1% of reviews describe the community, and complaints outnumber praise. Some found guilds and veterans generous with help ("the other players of BDO have been nothing but helpful"); others describe global chat as crude, elitist and quick to flame questions: "it's toxic, it's elitist".
What frustrates players
An endless grind that feels like a second jobHigh
The grind comes up in 13% of reviews. Some recommenders accept it as the point of the genre, but even they describe running the same mob rotation in circles for hundreds of hours to fund one upgrade. "You now grind 200 hours so that the next 200 hours will be 3% more efficient." "this is a second job that doesnt pay you irl." Several long-time players add that the endgame has nothing to spend the gear on: "there is no content for which gear progression is required." Some positive reviews come with advice to take breaks and play at your own pace.
A cluttered interface and an overwhelming startHigh
About 9% of reviews complain about the interface, the onboarding or not knowing what to do. New players describe a screen covered in icons, notifications, server-wide enhancement announcements, reward popups and cash-shop prompts, with menus that are hard to read and settings they could not change during the tutorial. "An absolute masterclass in action-combat completely suffocated by one of the worst, most bloated user interfaces in gaming history." Free rewards add to the clutter: "Within an hour of playing, my bags were full of raffle tickets, bonus chests, lucky coins, boosters". Fans say it too: the game teaches little of its own systems, and they point newcomers to outside guides: "you'll have a million Google and YouTube tabs open trying to learn the game".
Gamble-based gear enhancementHigh
Enhancement, RNG and cron stones come up in 6% of reviews, mostly from players past a thousand hours. They describe low success rates at the top, failures that downgrade armor and weapons, and failed accessories that are destroyed unless protected with cron stones, which tie back to the cash shop. "You can lose years of progress in literally seconds". One player summed up failstacks as "the only game where you have to RNG fail to RNG upgrade with your RNG failed stacks", and the same complaint extends to horse breeding, pet skills and event boxes. Some credit the pity system: "The infamous 1.5% success rates no longer mean infinite failure; players now have guaranteed paths to success." Others say the guarantee kicks in too late to change how it feels.
Crashes, black screens and launcher failuresMedium
About 4% of reviews report technical failures, often from players with only a few hours in the game. The ones they name are a black screen after character select, endless launcher loading, "Account Authentication failed" and other login errors, crashes when changing settings or servers, keybinds and interface layouts that reset, and quest steps that break. "5 Hour trying to run a game, end up with black screen". Some players say troubleshooting used up their Steam refund window.
Region and language locks on SteamMedium
About 3% of reviews raise region or language problems. Reviewers say the Steam version assigns a server from the buyer's Steam region with no way to change it, so players in the Middle East land on Turkish-language servers, players in Ukraine and other CIS countries get the Russian client, South Americans get Portuguese or Spanish, and some Asian regions get no English option. "If you are playing from the Middle East region, you are locked into Turkish servers." They also say they cannot join friends abroad, and that Steam and web accounts cannot be linked, so buying on the official site means starting over. Many of these reviewers wrote their review within the first hour.
Early quests buried in dialogueMedium
About 3% of reviews complain about the questing. They describe the early game as long chains of talking to NPCs a few steps apart, auto-pathing with T and skipping dialogue with R, with unskippable cutscenes and little combat: "All the way until about level 56 this is a press R simulator to skip through dialogue." The Magnus and Atoraxxion questlines draw particular anger ("Bar none the worst questline I've ever seen in a video game."). A minority enjoys the story, and some returning players credit the revamped opening: "The new tutorial and voice acting have made the begining of the game much better."
Long travel, tight inventory and weight limitsLow
About 2% of reviews complain about travel time before mounts and fast travel are unlocked, and about inventories that fill with free rewards and items nobody explains. "Almost 600 hours of game play and half of that is riding the horse from one destination to another." Players link these limits to the inventory, weight and horse items in the cash shop.
Lost accounts, verification loops and slow supportLow
About 2% of reviews describe losing an account or being unable to log in. Some say characters and paid items were lost for players who missed the account move from Kakao to Pearl Abyss, others say accounts were deleted after a long break, and others report verification codes that never arrive or one-time-password lockouts with no recovery path. "if you were not currently playing and keeping up with the game at that specific time, your account was completely lost." Reviewers describe support replies as slow, scripted or absent, and say the Steam and Pearl Abyss support desks send them back and forth.
Gender-locked classesLow
About 1% of reviews object that most classes come in one gender only, in a game praised for character customization. "It's gender locked. This is the big negative for me."
Weak controller supportLow
A small group of players who expected full gamepad play report menus, the marketplace and the cash shop needing a mouse, and inputs that stop working. "Partial controller support is a joke."
An invasive anti-cheatLow
A small number of reviews object to the anti-cheat, which they name as XIGNCODE, comparing it to a rootkit that scans far beyond the game and is hard to remove: "An anti-cheat that leaves files behind after its game is uninstalled is a massive red flag." Linux and Steam Deck players disagree on whether the game runs; some report it working, others say the anti-cheat blocks them.
3. The player conversation
Praise and complaint can share a review. Some of the warmest reviews warn readers to pace themselves, skip the cash shop and take breaks, and some negative reviews open by praising the combat and the world. Many reviews are one-liners and memes, so the detail comes from the longer ones.
Who raises what follows how far players got. Reviewers who quit in the first hours write about the interface, the dialogue, being stuck on a Turkish or Russian server, login loops and crashes. Players a few hundred hours in write about the grind and what the cash shop does or does not let them skip. Players with a thousand hours or more, some also counting time on the separate web launcher, write about enhancement failures, PvP changes, free gear devaluing their work, class balance and accounts deleted after a break.
Most of the reviews were written from 2024 onward, and the tone moved with events. Reviews from March and April 2024, when some reviewers mention buying it for about a dollar, recommend it at 72%. In the second half of September 2024, a run of veteran complaints about PvP changes pulled reviews down to 49%. A burst of short, positive reviews in the last week of November 2024 ran at 84%. Over the 2024 holidays and the first weeks of January 2025, two thirds of reviews came from players who got the game free, and that wave recommends it at 54%. Across whole years, reviews written in 2024 recommend it at 66%, in 2025 at 60% and in 2026 at 61%.
4. What the developers could do
- Soften the enhancement penalties. Gear downgrades, destroyed accessories and cron-stone protection are a recurring reason long-time players give for quitting, and some say the pity system helps but arrives too late.
- Strip back the interface and teach the systems in game. New players describe a screen buried in icons, popups and reward boxes and a game they could only learn through YouTube, and they want the layout editable from the start.
- Make convenience purchases account-wide and keep paid features from lapsing. Character-bound weight, inventory and emote purchases, and dyes that vanish when the value pack ends, are among the specific monetization complaints.
- Let Steam players choose their region and language and link their web accounts. Players forced onto Turkish, Russian, Portuguese or Spanish servers say they cannot play with friends or read the game, and many of them review it within their first hour.
- Condense the early questing. Players skip walls of dialogue with R, sit through unskippable cutscenes and single out the Magnus questline, so a shorter, skippable path to the combat would keep more of them.
- Give endgame gear somewhere to go, alone or together. Veterans say capped PvP and the lack of group PvE leave nothing to gear for, and players who came with friends ask for real group content and player trading.
- Restore lost accounts and fix the verification and support path. Players who lost accounts in the Kakao migration or after a break, or who are stuck in email and OTP verification loops, describe support that does not answer.
- Fix the launch blockers. Black screens after character select, authentication errors, endless launcher loading and settings that reset stop players before they reach the game, and some lose their refund window while troubleshooting.
